I don't know when I first heard “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as the black national anthem. It's a lovely song, and reading a recent article by Brandon Patterson at the Mother Jones site, it brought to mind the recent protests during the standard anthem that are getting so much attention at football games.

I like this anthem better and it's making me consider, what is my definition of patriotism?

Not my problem?

Last week Krista Tippet interviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates on her radio show "On Being." As a long time follower of Coates and Tippet, I found it a fascinating conversation. Sometimes in his writing Coates can sound rather hopeless about racial equality in this country and hopeless that white American will understand racial oppression. I suspected that Tippet was slightly intimidated by Coates, but she pressed Coates in ways that helped us all better understand this country's problems.

Coates made many interesting remarks, but below is one I particularly liked. He was explaining why the argument that one has nothing to do with racial inequality and so on just doesn't work.

...what people will tell you is, “Well, I didn’t have any slaves. I wasn’t alive when this happened. My ancestors just got here.” And what became clear to me, reading that, is: OK, but you cook out on the Fourth of July. Your ancestors weren’t here. They played no role in that. They had nothing to do with it. You take off for President’s Day, but you had no part in that. Your ancestors weren’t here. There are a number of patriotic rituals that folks have no problem participating in, as long as they can get credit for it.

But they don’t want the debits, see: “I want the paycheck; I don’t want to have to write a check, though.” And that is a kind of — in the piece, I think I talk about it as à la carte patriotism. It’s like sometimes-friendship: I’m there when I can get some, but when it gets tough, man, I’m out. “I wasn’t there. I had nothing to do with that.”

But it’s like, either you’re in or you’re out. Either you’re part of it, or you’re not. I was not alive during the Korean War. I had nothing to do with it. But my taxes go to pay pensions for folks, to this day. It would not have been my choice to invade Iraq, but my tax dollars went to it. That’s the way a state works. And so I think what people want is, they want to be a part of the state as long as it gives them something that they like.

Listen to the entire interview here.

Being Supported

Bryon Katie offers these reassurances for when you feel alone and unsupported:

...[S]uppose you've eaten your breakfast, sat down in your favorite chair, and picked up this book. Your neck and shoulders support your head. The bones and muscles of your chest support your breathing. Your chair supports your body. The floor supports your chair. The earth supports the building you live in. Various stars and planets hold the earth in its orbit. Outside your window a man walks down the street with his dog. Can you be sure that he isn't playing a part in your support? He may work every day in a cubicle, filing papers for the power company that makes your lights come on.

Among the people you see on the street, and the countless hands and eyes working behind the scenes, can you be sure that there is anyone who isn't supporting your existence? The same question applies to the generations of ancestors who preceded you and to the various plants and animals that had something to do with your breakfast. How many unlikely coincidences allow you to be here!

 From I Need Your Love--Is That True?